Political Magick in Thailand

With all the coverage of the US Presidential election, the ongoing political crisis in Thailand has attracted little attention. Briefly, in 2006 a group calling themselves the People's Alliance for Democracy led a military coup against the government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, alleging corruption on the part of the Prime Minister and his ruling party. With a new government in place, the coup leaders stepped down and declared their goals accomplished. However, Thaksin's allies came back to win a majority in the 2007 general election, prompting the current incarnation of the crisis. From wikipedia:

The PAD re-established itself after Thaksin-affiliated parties, led by Samak Sundaravej's People's Power Party (PPP), got the majority in the 2007 general election and decided to ratify the Constitution after one of its leading figure was charged with electoral fraud. According to the Constitution, this violation could lead to the dissolution of the party. PAD also believe that the real cause of the attempt to ratify the Constitution is to rescue the ousted Thaksin Shinawatra back to power. In May 2008, PAD began its street protest at Makhawan Bridge, on Ratchadamnoen Avenue. The main objectives of the renewing protest are the resistance of the constitutional amendment and the rejection of the PPP as the ruling party.

PAD began formal protests in May of this year, and during August and September seized the government house in an effort to force the current government to resign. The Thai seat of government is still occupied and the crisis shows no signs of letting up any time soon - especially since dark magick is apparently involved.

Sondhi Limthongkul, one of the leaders of the group which is illegally occupying the seat of Thai government, claimed in a recent televised speech that a wicked wizard has blocked the protective power of some of Bangkok's holiest sites.

It seems to me that this is a pretty inefficient way to go about creating political change using magick. I mean, why not just do a spell to restore the former prime minister to power? As an reasonably accomplished political magician, I can tell you that just specifying your final outcome without any intermediate means works fine. But I digress - naturally, once the spell was discovered Sondhi's supporters moved quickly to counter it.

He described how his own magicians removed six imaginary nails that had been placed around a towering royal statue in the city centre to block its power.

"I must thank the women of the PAD," he continued, "because after [the imaginary nails] were pulled out, to ensure they could not be replaced, they took sanitary napkins from menstruating women and placed them over the six points.

"Experts said the (evil wizards) were furious because they could not send their spirits back," Mr Sondhi boasted, "Their magic was rendered ineffective!"

In Thai superstition women's sexuality, and especially menstrual blood, is believed to have great destructive power.

Some thoughts - first off, why imaginary nails? You could use metal talismans, enchant them all together so that they are linked, and set them around the area of the statue at various distances forming a field. They would thus be difficult to find, especially if deeply buried or well-hidden. Imaginary nails used as talismans are kind of silly, since from a technical perspective you would be better off drawing a bunch of sigils over a polaroid photo of your target.

Secondly, blood and especially menstrual blood is very magically energetic, but that energy can be turned to many different purposes - it is not necessarily inherently destructive. If Sodhi's magicians don't realize this, the "remedy" could easily be reversed by a skilled rival. It would be especially diabolical because once the energy shifts, the blood itself would become the new anchor for the blocking spell and the only way to break it at that point would be to undo the remedy itself - and doing so would probably look very bad politically after Sondhi made such a big deal of it in his speech.